The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against in an attempt to prevent it from buying Within Unlimited, the maker of the virtual reality workout app . Organ and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg on “planning to expand Meta’s virtual reality empire with this attempt to illegally acquire a dedicated fitness app that demonstrates the value of virtual reality to user.”
The FTC states that Meta “has been an important player” at every level of the VR ecosystem. It says the company with the best-selling VR device (), a leading VR app store, “seven of the most successful developers and one of the best-selling apps of all time.” The latter likely refers to . Meta maker of that rhythm game, Beat Games, in 2019.
John Newman, deputy director of the FTC’s Competition Bureau, said in a statement: “Instead of competing on merit, Meta is trying to rise to the top. “Meta already has a best-selling virtual reality fitness app, and it has the ability to compete more closely with the popular Within app. Supernatural application. But Meta chose to buy the market position instead of earning it based on performance. This is an illegal acquisition and we will pursue all appropriate relief measures.”
Meta Its plan to buy In October last year. It was reported in December that the FTC has . Of course, Meta entered the VR market from the very beginning when it in 2014.
FTC arguments in the complaint that Meta has the resources and “reasonable probability” to enter the VR fitness market by building its own app. The agency claims that approach will “increase consumer choice, increase innovation, foster additional competition to attract the best employees, and deliver other competitive benefits.” Instead, if it bought Within, the FTC claimed Meta would limit “future innovation and future competition” and said that “reducing competition is a violation of antitrust laws.”
“The FTC case is based on ideology and speculation, not evidence. A spokesperson for Meta told Engadget in a statement that the idea that this acquisition would lead to anti-competitive outcomes in a dynamic space with as much entry and growth as online physical activity. and connected is simply unreliable”. Voting, the FTC is sending a chilling message to anyone who wants to innovate in VR. We are confident that the acquisition of Within will be good for everyone, the developers and the VR space”.
This move will be a huge blow to Meta’s goal of being the leader player. The company has invested billions of dollars in this endeavor, although in recent months it has backtracked on some of its ambitions by and reported supposedly connected to its metaverse. This week, the company announced that it will of the Meta Quest 2 headset down $100 as of Aug. 1. News of the FTC’s move to block its acquisition of Within comes the same day Meta will report its earnings for Q2 2022.
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